Demon to Some, Dead to The Rest
by Jyx The Berserk
Summary: Can you give up your humanity if you never had any to start with? Captured by the Covenant after Reach has been glassed, Noble Six has been transformed into a previously undiscovered species of alien and must keep her identity a secret from commanding officers and the Prophets. However, are the costs of secrecy too steep to be worth it?


If Noble Six was anything, she was driven. She'd shown this quality proudly in various places and times while doing things she wasn't so proud of. Her instructors had noted her uncommonly strong will back in the training days that didn't seem so long ago, and her superiors had tested it and her loyalty time and again by sending her on headhunter missions to hunt down insurrectionist leaders. Even with her time on Reach, her human kills outnumbered her alien ones by a wide margin. This last fight might change that.

She could see the drop ships closing in from the horizon and the sky. In a few minutes she'd be swimming up to her neck in the Covie horde but for now the calm and the dusty wind were the only things surrounding her.

"_How poetic, it makes me want to puke._" Thoughts that were not hers made the Spartan sigh with exasperation. "_Stick your fingers down your throat and make yourself gag so I have an adequate feeling of disgust to match._" Six didn't respond, relying on her lack of attention to once again shut up the voice in her head.

The voice was one of the bigger mysteries she had yet to figure out, right up there next to "what does Master Chief look like?" and "where did Jun go after he left?" She'd been stuck with it since after investigating a cave on a scouting mission, finding an alien skeleton wrapped in chains with its jaw nailed shut, and had been pissed off at the spirit that had possessed her ever since.

The favorite pass-times of this thing was to point out the tightest asses of anything that moved (in its own words, "dummy thick"), and try to get her to agree to some "deal" that she hadn't bothered to listen to the details of. Now though…

"Shut up for a second," Six said quietly, silencing the voice after she'd finally recognized its presence. Before it could start talking again, she told it, "Tell me about your deal, is there any way it can help me stay alive?"

"_Well, well, well,_" the voice purred, dripping slime into her ear with each word. "_So, you finally came around, eh? As I've been trying so _very hard_ to tell you, my hard-headed friend, I have a deal for you, and it reads thusly: I obtain the ability to co-pilot your bones like we're both driving the same warthog, and in exchange I'll change your physiology to match the rockin' bod that I had a few thousand years ago._" An image flashed in her mind of a creature that looked like a humanoid dragon without any wings, and legs like an Elite. Gray scales overlapped on its form and six conical horns grew backward on the sides of its head in a pseudo-crown while two more curved toward ahead of the face. (**Imagine that the lone wanderer stuck it in a deathclaw, and the unholy abomination that resulted had six deadly nadder horns in addition to the regular ones**)

"Give me a minute to think about it," Six said, standing up from one of the many Spartan corpses littering the construction site, a sniper rifle in her hands. The Covenant was here and she wanted to give them a fight that would drench their history books in blood. She made a decision as the first ships began dropping soldiers, "When I can't fight anymore, then I'll agree, but not a second before."

"… _Wait, do you actually think you can fucking _win_?!_" The voice asked, incredulous. An Elite head snapped back, and the report of her rifle rang the world's loudest dinner bell. They charged. "_You're insane if you think you can survive on your own! Accept the deal, or you WILL die, and you'll drag me down with you!_" She fired three more times in quick succession, bursting more heads, and the creature was forced to stay silent or risk distracting her at a critical moment.

Six showcased her incredible drive for what would likely be the last time, lasting well past what the creature and herself both expected. Her roaring battle cry stabbed fear into the enemy heart, as did her speed in dispatching them. She screamed her pain and her will to live out into the open, baring her flaming soul for the Covenant to witness and cower at the heat of her fire.

The bodies piled high around her blood-soaked body over the next several hours, forming cover for her to hide behind when the plasma got too thick. Down moments were far between and never more than a minute apiece, leaving her exhausted like no amount of training could ever dream of replicating. Her muscles screamed in protest with every trigger pull, and she shouted back at them. When night came around it was a little easier to avoid the hail of plasma and needles, but even that advantage was stripped of her with the sunrise.

The morning light revealed the sorry state of the last Spartan on Reach: plasma burns had melted her armor into a nearly unrecognizable heap of slag strapped to her body, burned skin showing through holes in her undersuit in the gaps between the metal plates. Her cracked visor rendered her HUD useless, and she threw it off to gulp down the smoky air in huge gasps even though it stretched her burns and made her grimace with pain. A few pink crystals had tagged her left hip, and she used an empty gun as a crutch on that side.

She slowly and shakily brought a plasma rifle to bear on the encroaching Elites. She could almost feel her tendons tearing with the strain. The leader batted aside her shots with his plasma sword, advancing steadily towards the nearly-dead Spartan. He reached her and hit the weapon itself out of her hand, staring down the panting woman with an indescribable look. He gazed around at her handiwork: bodies of Grunts, Jackals, Elites, Brutes, even a few Hunters, all dead and taking up more space on the ground than the dirt itself.

"It brings me no pleasure to kill a warrior as skilled as you, demon," the Elite said in English, surprising Six with his use of the language. He looked directly into her eyes. "It is a shame you weren't born on Sanghelios."

"It's… a shame I… can't fight… any more than this…" Six said, fluently speaking his native language around her panting. She spat blood into the dirt and coughed for a moment to clear out her lungs. "If I could… I'd send you… and those other… _bastards_… behind you… to meet… up… with them…" She jerked her head towards the dead Elites surrounding them, grinning and chuckling weakly up into the Elites' face. He scowled at her use of that most dishonorable word, certainly knowing its weight in their society, and shoved her to her knees as he drew his plasma sword and ignited it with a loud hiss.

"Speak your last words now demon, your end draws near," he said, stepping behind her and getting ready to run her through.

"Fine," Six said as he gripped her shoulder. "Asshole… we have a… deal…"

"_About fucking time._" Suddenly her world was pain. It burned, pierced, wrenched, and permeated every part of her body. The Elite jumped back in surprise as the demon before him began screaming out her lungs and convulsing on the ground without his blade through her back. The others couldn't shoot at Six without risk of shooting their comrade, and so everyone was forced to watch the soldier experience a change.

The wounds and burns littering Six's body sealed before their eyes, and the skin that replaced her pale flesh was much like their own grey and scaly bodies. Her form stretched until her suit could no longer contain her expanding body and it ripped along the many holes in it as she was released. She vomited up what little there was in her stomach, and then her organs came out in bloody chunks as her chest cavity was filled with replacements; the stench forced the Elite that had almost executed her to take a few steps back. Bones snapped in her legs and formed new joints while a thin tail ripped from the end of her spine and whipped wildly in the air behind her. Claws on her hands and feet gouged lines into the bloody mud beneath her.

Suddenly, all of her movements and noise stopped. There was silence for a beat, and the closest Elite inched closer to the still body to investigate the supernatural occurrence. Six whipped her head around and bit off his hand, springing from the mud to claw his throat open and slash at his stomach, spilling entrails across the ground. Before he could realize he had died, she sprinted toward the shocked group of suddenly terrified Elites as they opened fire, but she dodged all of their shots until she was upon them.

Six chomped the head of the first one clean in half from the front, following up with two clawed kicks at the next Elite, puncturing vital organs and leaving him to choke on blood. With a screech, she leaped toward the next one, claws stretched out to pierce through his eye sockets and into his brain. The last elite roared a challenge as he primed a grenade, but Six displayed incredible flexibility as she bent over her hands to kick his mandibles into his mouth. He was sent flying backward with a live grenade stuck to his hand and promptly blew up as the timer reached zero. Bloody chunks showered the area he would have landed in.

Six collapsed to the ground, unconscious after expending so much energy to fight off her attackers, and quietly curled up to rest. Blood of every shade and mud caked her from head to toe in gore.

While she slept, another dropship flew in to investigate the radio silence of the veritable army that had been sent to destroy the Spartan menace, finding a field of corpses where there should have been a celebrating army and a dead demon. Though difficult to spot because of the gory camouflage, Six was eventually found among the dead and captured to be questioned. That is if she wasn't just some mindless beast.

"What even is this thing?" was the common line of questioning among the Covenant that were authorized to know about her existence. Nobody could find evidence of where this thing came from, how she found her way into the middle of a battlefield, or even what she was.

A few hours after Six had been brought onto a carrier, she woke up and promptly scared the shit out of everyone nearby when she slammed into the side of its cage, bending the bars outward as she scrambled about.

"Where the hell am I?!" she shouted in Sangheili with a distinctly light voice. "What the fuck is going on?!"

"You're on the vessel Terrible Dawn orbiting the planet we found you on," an Elite captain said. Six whipped its head towards his voice in a manner fitting of a frightened animal. "You are being held here because you were lying unconscious in the middle of a battlefield with the blood of my soldiers staining your claws and the demon they'd been sent to kill nowhere to be found. Explain what happened immediately."

"_You're an unknown, try the amnesia trick,_" the voice supplied. Having nothing else to go with, she tried to buy time while she thought of a story. After a few moments of staring around the room and looking cautiously at everyone that occupied it, Six focused her gaze back on the captain.

"I don't know what happened down there or how I got there; I can't even remember my own name." She winced as she leaned forward, placing a hand on the back of her head. "Damn, that's probably why." Her head really was pounding, so it wasn't hard to play it up.

"You killed my soldiers, wench. You think your lies will convince me?" the captain demanded.

"If I'm a liar then I'm a Sangheili, I have no idea how I got here," she said, sitting on the floor of her cage. "Much as both of us want to know what happened, I really can't tell you." Had infiltration not been part of her skill set, she might have already been found out. Thankfully, the unique situation allowed her room to work.

"How convenient," the captain said quietly, backing off. He looked over at the other Elites gathered around her cage, most of them wearing angry, frustrated, and confused looks on their faces. "Transport her to a cell, I must report these events." With that, the captain left, and Six was delivered into a cell with a transparent shield for a door.

"_Well, at least you're alive,_" the voice said. "_Could be worse; you could be dead on Reach right now, or getting tossed between the Elites like-_ "

"Enough of your rambling," she muttered, curling up on the floor in an imitation of her position on the battlefield. "I need more sleep." She didn't move for the next day except to eat the food they brought her and to use the restroom once, otherwise, she was curled up asleep in the middle of her cell. The guards who watched her were confused by the confliction between the reports of a terrifying beast and the cute female curled up in the cell that they guarded.

After an entire day, the barrier to her cell came down and the captain entered Six's cell to discover that she was already awake and standing ready in the middle of the cell, watching him and the guards cautiously. "You are fortunate, female; the Prophets have commanded me to escort you to High Charity so that you may meet them face to face. Know that I would have chosen to cast you from this ship into the void."

"Then I am grateful it was not up to you to decide my fate," Six said, maintaining a respectful tone with the captain. "Am I to assume these… Prophets are your leaders?" At his confirmation, she continued with a bow. "Then I must ask you for a kindness, as I don't wish to meet them without some covering. Do you have something I may wear?" He snorted at her polite tone of speaking but ordered an attendant to fetch her some clothes regardless. In short order Six was garbed in a baggy robe and standing before a hologram of Truth, though she was restrained to a nearly absurd degree and surrounded by six guards.

"_The captain of the Terrible Dawn has informed me of recent events, and what he believes to have happened in question to your involvement with the deaths of Sangheili warriors,_" Truth said. Six took a moment to look him up and down, summarizing the religious leader in a few words: frail, cowardly, and political.

"Unfortunately, I have lost my memory, otherwise I would have told him and by extension, you, what had happened, lies or no, your eminence," Six replied with a bowed head. She'd quickly been told before her meeting with the Prophet how to address him. "If I am guilty of what they say I am, I cannot say why I did it, and can only offer my apologies if it is the case, as I've nothing else to offer. Most likely I was defending myself or at least thought I was. If I am innocent, I would humbly ask only for my freedom. Though it seems that whether or not I am guilty lies with your decision, your eminence." Truth rubbed his chin in thought and noise left the room.

"_It seems you are not blind to the situation you are in,_" the Prophet said, breaking the long silence. "_Then perhaps this matter may be overlooked if you are willing to solve a trifling matter._" Six looked directly into his holographic eyes, staying quiet for just long enough to show that she knew what he was saying without showing disrespect. She was back in the familiar territory of her headhunting days it would seem.

"I am willing if I am able, what needs to be done?" Six asked. Not even a fortune teller could have predicted the consequences of these words.


End file.
